Australia becomes the third country to feature "sponsored" content on Instagram

Australia becomes the third country to feature "sponsored" content on Instagram

Ad free so far, Instagram is taking the "sponsored" content route one country at a time.

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IndiaToday.in

New Delhi

October 8, 2014

UPDATED: October 8, 2014 16:15 IST

Following the US and the UK, Australia will become the third country in the world to have ads on users' Instagram feeds.

The picture sharing social network has been around since 2010 and is available without advertising of any sort to users all across the world except these three countries. Ads were introduced in the UK just last month and the US saw advertisements hitting user feeds last year.

Pictures and videos will appear in feeds just like posts normally do except that they will prominently feature "sponsored" tags. The style is akin to Facebook which bought the app for $1 billion in 2012.

The ads will be targeted towards people on the basis of demographic data like age, gender and location and will be rolled out gradually. Among the initial partners to Instagram's ad network are brands like McDonalds, Toyota, Ben & Jerry's, Audi and Vegemite.

The ads will be designed in such a way that they do not break the visual aesthetic of Instagram and are not jarring to the user.

In a bid to ensure seamless convergence with the millions of photos and videos shared by users daily, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom is personally vetting every single ad before it is up on the network.

Instagram so far has predominantly been ad free for a majority of its users worldwide. The slow roll out of advertisements across countries could be seen as a sign of imminent roll outs for a larger worldwide implementation of advertising on Instagram.

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